This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Portions of the anatomy can generally be formed relative to one another to allow for a natural articulation, support, movement, or the like. Nevertheless, due to various circumstances, such as injury, disease, or the like, various portions of the anatomy can become damaged. In various orthopedic surgical procedures, it may be necessary to align and secure fractured bone portions in a relatively fixed relationship to each other. For example, it may be necessary to establish such a secured relationship after the bone has been fractured. To ensure that the bone can regenerate in the proper orientation and fuse the fracture, it may be important that the bone portions be fixed relative to each other.
It is known in the art to provide metal plates for the repair of bone fractures. The plates may be generally secured to the fractured bone portions with fasteners such as bone screws. In the case of a clavicle fracture, it may be particularly challenging to provide a bone plate that specifically matches the profile of the patient's clavicle. In this regard, the clavicle generally includes an “S” shape in a superior-inferior view. The sharpness of the curves that form the “S” as well as the overall length of the clavicle varies greatly across a large patient population. Therefore, it is often necessary for a surgeon to specifically structurally modify the contour of a given plate to match the clavicle of the particular patient.
According to one common technique, a surgeon may bend a bone plate in the operating room to fit a particular patient's broken bone. Usually, the bending is a trial and error process. The surgeon may place the bone plate onto the fractured bone, determine where the bend in the plate is desired, take the plate off of the bone, bend the plate and then place the plate back on the patient's bone to verify fit. The process may be repeated until adequate fit is achieved. As can be appreciated, the process may be particularly lengthy for highly contoured bones such as a clavicle resulting in a prolonged surgery.